Thursday, March 27, 2014

...THE REVEREND ELLISON PARKER was everyone favorite pastor.
He offered the invocation at the beginning of every Town Board Meeting,
sponsored teen nights in the church basement and gave the benediction at most
community gatherings. He officiated at weddings
and funerals, was present for baptisms and stood in uniform and prayed every
Memorial Day and every Veteran’s Day. He rolled up his sleeve and got dirty
whenever Mother Nature or some less impressive human counterpart dealt injury
to his flock. At night, he knelt by his
bedside and read from the bible before sliding under the covers for an evening
of well-deserved, gratifying peace.

We later learned that the good
reverend’s wife slept in the smaller bedroom down the hall. That didn’t matter to the Reverend Dr.
Parker. Every night, he pulled the
covers high around his neck. He lay on
his side and spent a few minutes bending his knees just so and shifting his
back and shoulders until he found that perfect place on the mattress. It was old and all the dents and imperfections
accepted his body perfectly. When he was
completely comfortable, his arm, the upper one, the right one, slipped across
the body of his young daughter and pulled her to him. She began sharing his bed when she was four;
the practice continued until she was twelve years old.

There was an early frost that
October, but Ellison didn’t feel the cold.
He never felt cold at night. What
he felt instead were curves that weren’t there before. When he touched her, he felt her breath hitch. He heard, or imagined, the tiniest moan
slipping past his daughter’s lips. He
felt her move, or thought he felt her move or envisioned his young daughter
moving next to and against him and he was appalled. This was not right. This was sin.
Every evil ever visited upon men by women found entre into his
bedchamber that evening. The good
Reverend Ellison Parker could not abide sin.
Sin had to be dispatched quickly.
Decisively. And so, just one
week before Halloween, in the nearly morning hours well before dawn, evil was quickly
and quietly returned to the shadows.

The Reverend’s car ended up in
Barker’s pond. He sent it off the end of
the pier and let it sink into the water and the mud. Barker’s pond is not very deep but it was
just deep enough to cover the trunk.
Only the red of the tail lights broke the surface of the water.

I was there when we opened that
trunk. Little, twelve year old Emily
Parker, lay in that trunk stuffed behind the spare tire. She was naked. And broken. There were bruises on her thighs and her
chest and her neck. Her hands and her
ankles and her mouth were taped. Her
eyes were wide open. They were the
biggest eyes I had ever seen and I was convinced that she saw everything when he
carried her into that trunk. In that
desperate part of my mind, the part that now needed to retire, I believe she
saw everything as we carried her to the ambulance.

The good reverend locked her in the
trunk alive. He let her die in the dark
without a single creature comfort. He let the icy water bubble in and take her
slowly. The Most Reverend Doctor Parker
left his daughter to the most sinister death imaginable. There may be more evil ways to kill a person
but when I stared into that trunk at the bloating body of young Emily Parker, I
could not think of any.

When the car was removed from the
murky waters, Ellison Parker was not behind the wheel. The evidence suggested he slipped into the
woods behind the pond and disappeared for a while.

The Reverend never stood in a
courtroom to answer for his crimes.
Rumor has it that he was shot trying to break into a barn. It was December by then and he was probably
trying to keep warm. I do not know the
circumstances. I did not investigate
Ellison Parker. I am ashamed to say I
put my papers in the morning after we opened that trunk; I left that duty to
someone else but I was glad to know he was gone. The bullet that took him was up close and
personal. It was the type of closure
that comes from a trunk slamming shut. That was enough.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Brought to life by Steve Ferchaud’s vibrant drawings, this story for all ages by Dan O’Brien lets us know that it is never too late to have one more adventure.

An Excerpt:

Robert Pendleton opened one eye as the light of a passing car flashed over the window, shattering the darkness into prisms. He rolled onto his back on the beat-up couch and yawned as he reached his hands up and rubbed his eyes unceremoniously.

He looked out over the darkness at the digital clock. The red digits spelled out a quarter ‘til midnight––nearly fourteen hours of sleep. He smiled and grabbed one of the cushions of the couch, burying his head in it. Just enough sleep, he reminded himself. Robert felt that anything less than twelve hours of sleep was very nearly too little.

He grasped blindly for the TV remote.

Groaning as he lifted his head, he looked at the empty table––his eyes drawn by another flash of a passing car. He couldn’t see clearly, but he knew that the remote had been there before he had fallen asleep nearly half a day ago.

“Could have sworn….” he mumbled as he pushed himself up and brushed his hand around the top of the table, finding nothing. “Where did….”

Another groan escaped his lips as he lifted his body to a sitting position and threw aside the cluster of pillows that he had gathered around himself. He reached out for the lamp, but instead knocked it to the floor with a resounding thud.

Robert muttered as he stood up from the couch, and then sank to his knees to search around in the darkness for the fallen lamp. Reaching around on the shadowed floor, shards of the broken lamp scattered like pieces of light.

He turned his head, peering beneath the large space underneath the couch and saw the reflection of the buttons on the remote. The off-gray piece of machinery was underneath the couch––only darkness lingered beyond it. He reached out as he spoke again.

“How did it get all the way down there?”

Robert flexed his hand and strained as he twisted his back to reach farther; yet, the remote remained just out of reach. He pulled his arm away with a huff and craned his neck to the side, staring underneath into the darkness below the couch.

His eyes widened as he saw the impossible: there was something beyond the remote. He shook his head and closed his eyes, whispering to himself that he didn’t see what he thought he had.

“I saw a little man,” he whispered to himself as he opened his eyes once more and nearly gasped as he did so.

The figure was closer now and he could make out the outline clearly. A tiny man rested just beyond the remote.

“What in the name of…?”

“Not here in the name of nobody, laddie. I be a friend though,” crooned the miniscule figure as he interrupted Robert and stepped forward, placing a hand on the darkened and slick surface of the remote.

A billow of whitish smoke drifted from the long-stemmed pipe that he held clenched between his lips.

Robert fell back and knocked aside the adjacent table. Rubbing his eyes, he spoke a single word: “Leprechaun.”

About the Author:

Dan O’Brien, founder and editor-in-chief of The Northern California Perspective, has written over 20 books––including the bestselling Bitten, which was featured on Conversations Book Club’s Top 100 novels of 2012. Before starting Amalgam, he was the senior editor and marketing director for an international magazine. In addition, he has spent over a decade in the publishing industry as a freelance editor. You can learn more about his literary and publishing consulting business by visiting his website at: www.amalgamconsulting.com. Contact him today to order copies of the book or have them stocked at your local bookstore. He can he reached by email at amalgamconsulting@gmail.com.

Would you like to win a remarked copy of Conspirators of the Lost Sock Army and Loose Change Collection Agency signed by the author and illustrator?Simply follow the author here and here and a few winners will be randomly selected on March 20th!